Reporting and analytics applications frequently use abstractions, shortened records, or other aggregate forms of transactional business data. Business data may include key figures data, which can be data that may be aggregated using an appropriate function. For example, sales totals for a particular time period can be summed, or a minimum and maximum daily sales total can be calculated. In another example, pricing information can be extracted from larger transactional data structures and be stored in a more efficient aggregate table for reporting. In many environments, key figures data can be grouped by one or more items of information which can be referred to as characteristic data. For example, sales totals can be grouped by sales person, sales region, product, etc., and aggregated sales totals can be calculated for each characteristic grouping. Business reports can include aggregated data, and reporting performance may be improved if aggregate data is retrieved from a precalculated aggregate structure. Business reports may also include master, or non-transactional data.